Veni, Vidi, Scripsi

Tag Archives: Crimewatch

That is a glimpse at an hour’s worth of destruction happening right on the 4-4 undock in Jita, the economic center of the EVE Online universe, in the middle of high security space.

Starting on April 27th, the Goons and their CFC allies set about to disrupt the heart of the EVE economy by suicide ganking freighters and other ships involved in commerce.

How many people even got this reference?

Anybody paying attention had plenty of advance notice.

Of course, few actually pay attention, but that is another story.

A Save Jita defense force was formed while others just planned to stay away from the system during the event. The Save Jita forces declared was on the various CFC alliances. This, in turn, prompted many CFC players not really interested in suicide ganking to come out and fight with the Save Jita forces.

Freighters were blown up. Gankers were blown up. Opposing defense and ganker escort forces were blown up. Random strangers were blown up. That guy in the disco Bhaalgorn was blown up. There was a frenzy of looting and salvaging. You can see some wrecks being hit with 3-5 white salvage beams in that video.

It was a short, sharp event that gave a bunch of people something different to do over a weekend and something to argue about for the weeks surrounding it. A classic EVE Online happening.

And at then end of things, The Mittani announced that we would be back to do it again some day.

But the CFC hasn’t been back. Not yet, in any case.

There was the war in Delve to prosecute and, once we were home from that, the sovereignty grind in Tribute started and is only now petering out in The Vale of the Silent. Sure, there has been some Goon ultra violence in high sec. There has been a low key freighter ganking op going on for some time and a new Gallente ice interdiction campaign started up recently. But neither of those are splashy, front page events.

And given the logistics of getting ready for an event like Burn Jita, it looks like the next EVE Online expansion, Retribution, will hit before any such event can be pulled off.

And part of Retribution is a Crimewatch update, which might shake things up in high sec space a little.

If not criminal, at least controversial

So the question here is, will the Crimewatch changes in Retribution impact a second Burn Jita event?

The short answer seems to be “no.”

Yes, you’re welcome for my wasting your time with all of that back story and build up.

But how can this be? There was a freaking dev blog post that required not one but two giant charts to help explain the changes. Jester has done a couple of posts just looking into the changes. And did I mention the charts? Like this one?

This is the one about getting flagged

The thing is, a lot of the changes are really just details, at least in this context.

We get new, visible timers, which I love. But that doesn’t actually change anything.

Security status impacts happen when you initiate an unlawful attack rather than after you killed whoever, so you get penalized after you fail. But if you’re already set on suicide ganking somebody, you’ve accept that your security status is going to take a hit, so who cares.

I suppose something could be said about getting flagged if you remote rep a criminal… but that generally isn’t how suicide ganking works.

There have been changes to the war dec mechanics which I haven’t even bothered to look into, but I would take it as read that war can still be declared and legitimate war targets remain legitimate targets where ever you find them, so only the visible meter showing your aggression timer changes there.

No, to my mind, the only thing that seems like it might change for a new Burn Jita event is looting.

You see, with the Retribution changes, if you loot a wreck which is not yours, you will be flagged as a “suspect” and open season for anybody who cares to take a shot at you. Or so says the consequence chart. And one of the things going on in the original Burn Jita event was a rush to loot the wrecks that were strewn about the 4-4 undock area.

So that change could make things interesting.

While there will be plenty of legitimate loot floating about, I am sure there will also be enough loot that belongs to individuals out there to get more than a few greedy grabbers flagged as suspects. And then anybody can shoot them. This will, in turn, leave more potential bait loot on the field that can ensnare more looters. And the cycle goes on.

This could bring a whole new group into the already crowded space in front of the Jita 4-4 undock. A new level of hilarity could ensue as people learn about Retribution changes, and how everybody gets to shoot people with the suspect flag, the hard way. And the hard way is always the EVE way.

At least that is how I see the Retribution changes impacting a second Burn Jita campaign. But I am famous… in as much as I have any fame at all… for noticing tiny tangential details while failing to grasp the big picture.

So what am I missing? How else will Retribution impact this sort of thing?